Gorging in a Ghost Town
by ICanStopAnytime
Summary: Carol likes to ruffle Daryl's feathers, and she's good at it, too. But sometimes, teasing turns to comfort. A one-shot set in the prison era.


**A/N:** _This one-shot was written for a fanfiction challenge in which I had to somehow work in the words ghost, gorge, grocery, granular, glazier, and glaucous._

[*]

The street reminded Carol of the old western movies she used to watch with her father in high school. She would sit beside him on his sick bed in those final days, with the cheap television glowing on the opposite dresser, transporting them to worlds where good still triumphed over evil. In those movies, tumbleweed drifted across empty dirt roads in ghost-like towns, but here it was plastic grocery bags, junk mail flyers, and paper wrappers that had once enveloped hot, fast food.

They had seen no walkers at all for the first block of the subdivision, but now as they began to walk between two parked cars toward a promising-looking house, Daryl's left arm shot out to block her from stepping forward. The move reminded her of all those times, in the days before seatbelts, when her father would react to a sudden stop in his 1958 Buick by throwing out his arm to keep her from hitting the dash. It annoyed her the same way, too. What did her father think? That she was incapable of reaching out and bracing herself? And what good did it do him to have only one hand free, when he ought to have both on the wheel?

Daryl ought to have _both_ on his bow now, and soon enough he did. An arrow wooshed and lodged itself into the forehead of a walker that had just lurched around a set of bushes lining the sidewalk. It fell face first on the pavement, just beside a child's handprint now permanently dried in the once wet cement. Daryl recovered his arrow, wiped the bloodied tip across his pants leg, and returned it to his bow.

"I could have stabbed it, you know," Carol said. "I'm armed, too. What did you bring me on this run for, if you aren't going to let me kill anything?"

"Tell ya what I _didn't_ bring ya for. All the naggin'." He moved his hand like an opening and closing mouth.

Carol slapped his hand down, rolled her eyes, and strode ahead of him to the house. She gasped and jerked back when a walker grabbed her ankle from beneath the lattice of the porch. It lost its grip, and she could hear Daryl breaking into a run, so she quickly unsheathed her knife, bent, and stabbed it before he could get there. Breathing hard, she stumbled back from the slain walker.

"Got to get yer knife back," he said.

"I know that, Captain Obvious! Who's nagging now?" She bent down and yanked the knife from its squishy brain. Daryl handed her the red rag that perpetually hung from his back pocket, and she wiped the metal clean. He tucked the rag, guts and all, back into his back pocket. "Don't forget and use that for a handkerchief," she told him.

"Only use it to clean arrows and check oil. Use my sleeves for a handkerchief, like a civilized man."

She laughed. Then she nodded toward the house. "Let's hope this one has some formula for Judith. We're down to one can in the prison pantry now." The yard contained a muddy, rain-filled blue plastic paddling pool, as well as some scattered baby and toddler toys, so there was hope.

Daryl shouldered his crossbow, walked a few feet across the overgrown lawn to the Fisher Price Popper Push Toy, picked up the handle, and gave it a push. The little balls inside pop-pop-popped in the clear plastic dirt-caked bubble. "Used to love this thing."

"Really? Little Daryl Dixon liked to pretend to vacuum?"

"Ain't no damn vacuum! It's a…"

"A what?" Carol asked with a barely repressed smile.

"Dunno," he muttered. "A thing with a handle and balls – it's a boy's toy!"

"Pretty sure it's supposed to mimic a vacuum."

Daryl threw the toy down on the ground with a grunt. "C'mon. Check this place out." He thundered up the stairs of the wooden porch, and she followed.

Daryl peered into the cracked glass of the horizontal window to the left of the door.

"My father would have fixed that up nice," Carol said. "He was an excellent glazier."

"A what?"

"Glazier. Someone who fits glass into windows and doors."

"Where I come from, that's called a handyman." He giggled the door handle, then motioned to her with his head to get back. She stepped back, drew her knife, and prepared for the worst, but when he threw the door open, there was nothing.

Daryl entered first, and then Carol shut the front door with a soft click behind them. She latched the bolt. You never knew when living humans might come around, and it was better to hear them coming.

They crept through the foyer toward the living room. Daryl swept right around the partial wall to find no sign of life. They walked through it to another hall, passed an open doorway leading to the basement, and landed in the dining room, which was empty except for a table set with dusty china, including a sugar bowl. Next to the sugar bowl was a half empty, blue and white bag of granulated sugar. Carol crept forward and peeked in the bag. It was full of dead ants. She would take it anyway, later. They were out of sugar at the prison. She could always sift out the tiny ant carcasses.

Also on the center of the dining room table was a large, wooden bowl full of plastic grapes. "Look damn real," Daryl said.

"They do. And the dust just makes them look glaucous."

"Glacu – what?"

"It means, you know, having a powdery, waxy covering, like you sometimes see on grapes."

"Yer a damn walkin' Word-A-Day calendar today, ain't ya?"

"I'm sorry," Carol said with an exaggerate southern accent and a tone of false repentance. "I'll stop sounding so smart. I'll do my very best just to try to look pretty from now on." She batted her eyelashes at him.

He grunted. "Ain't got to _try_." He'd already moved on to the kitchen before she realized he'd just given her a compliment.

Carol followed him. He went and pulled apart the curtains above the sink, and the rays of the setting sun flooded the dim little room. Meanwhile, Carol threw open the pantry. "Oh, Pooky, we've found Paradise."

Daryl came over to stand behind her. "Hell yeah. Gonna gorge ourselves tonight! And fill the whole damn trunk of our car when we go, too!"

Carol smiled as her eyes swept over the contents of the pantry – the first they'd found that hadn't been cleaned out in the apparent evacuation of this neighborhood. This particular family had _stayed_ – well, until they'd turned. And there _was_ formula, four whole cans of it. As well as all sorts of pasta, rice, soups, beans, vegetables, canned fruit, oil, flour, condiments, oatmeal, grits, bottled juice, blue ten-gallon drums of water, sixteen liters of soda, and more. The people here had stocked up and were planning to hunker down, but they'd died too early to eat their stash. If they didn't have a prison and a people to go back to, she and Daryl could live here for months, like two pioneers on a new frontier.

"Killed mama and dada," Daryl said. "So where's the kids?"

Carol closed her eyes and grabbed one of the pantry shelves for support.

"Stay here," he said. "Clear the rest of the house myself."

She didn't protest, like she would have if he'd just been protecting her from _physical_ harm, but she knew that wasn't what he was protecting her from. She heard him thunder down the basement stairs, and then up them again two minutes later, shutting the door behind himself. Next, his heavy bootsteps creaked around upstairs, stopped, creaked around some more, and stopped again. A minute later, something thudded hard on the ground on the left side of the house, followed by a second thud. She didn't go find a window to look out of. He'd probably been careful to throw the bodies away from any downstairs window anyway, to spare her from having to see them.

When he came back to the kitchen, she didn't ask what he'd found up there. "All clear," he said, and that was enough. "'Cept I seen a big dark cloud on the horizon out the window. Storm a brewin'. Oughtta hold up 'til it passes. Maybe 'til mornin', just to be safe. Head back early."

Carol nodded her agreement. "I don't want to sleep upstairs in the bedrooms, though," she said. She didn't want to see any evidence of those children.

"Couch in the livin' room. Love seat. Sleep there. Front of the fireplace. Stay warm that way anyhow. Smarter. Gonna go board up the downstairs windows. Ya can make us dinner."

"Oh, _can_ I?"

"Ya'd rather I cook?"

"I'm going to be heating up soup. It doesn't require a culinary degree. But go board up the windows."

Daryl got hammer and nails from a workbench in the unfinished basement and broke up some bookcases for wood. He stacked the chairs from the dining room table in front of the front door, while Carol got the fireplace going with newspaper and wood and cooked soup in a pot over it. She cleaned two bowls and spoons using paper towels dampened with bottled water and then filled them with steamy Campbell's Hearty Beef Stew.

They gorged themselves wordlessly before the crackling fireplace, which illuminated a room that was now otherwise dark without the light from the windows. They washed their dinner down with Coca-Cola and had granola bars for dessert. Aided by a flashlight, Carol cleared the dishes to the sink, even though there was no real reason to do so. Some habits still lingered. All the way from the living room, she could hear Daryl's appreciative belch. "Excuse you!" she called.

"It's how ya's 'sposed to compliment the chef!" he called back.

She chuckled, shook her head, and out of curiosity, began opening the cabinets. The beam of her small flashlight swept over the contents. Who knew? There might be more food – and there _was_ – a set of baby bottles and an open can of formula on one shelf, and, above that, lying on their sides – three bottles of wine. "I found Mama's juice!" Carol called back to the living room and pulled one of the bottles down. She found two wine glasses, cleaned them out with a dampened paper towel, dug around for the corkscrew, and, hands full and flashlight in her mouth between her teeth, returned to the living room. Daryl had his boots off, his filthy socks tucked into the tops, and his black-bottomed feet up on the coffee table. He was sitting on the love seat and smoking a cigarette he'd found.

Carol opened her mouth and let the flashlight fall to the couch. "Not inside, please," she said as she set down the bottle and glasses on the coffee table, clicked off the flashlight, and then sat on the end of the couch perpendicular to him in the love seat.

"Cain't go outside. Already boarded up. Ain't no different from the smoke in the fireplace."

"It's very different," Carol insisted. "And that smoke is going up and out the chimney."

He sighed and stubbed out the cigarette in the ash tray on the end table. "Ya must of been a pain in the ass to live with." He closed his eyes and winced. "Sorry," he said quickly. "Sorry. Weren't thinkin'. Didn't mean that. Didn't – "

"- It's okay. I know you were…joking. Sort of. In your way."

"Didn't mean it."

"I know," she assured him.

"Would of liked livin' with ya."

"You _do_ live with me," she reminded him.

"Yeah, I know, no, mean, if'n you was my wife. I'd of liked it."

"Oh?"

"No! I mean…shit. I just mean…Ed was a fuckin' asshole is what I mean! And I didn't mean to say the kind of thing he might of said to ya. Just don't like bein' told to put my smoke out."

"I figured that's what you were getting at," she said. "In your eloquent way." She smiled at him and picked up the corkscrew and put it atop the bottle.

Noticing the bottle for the first time, he pointed to it. " _That's_ mama juice? Though ya meant ya found her pumped tit milk."

"Tit milk?" she asked. The cork sprung free with a loud pop. "There's that Dixon eloquence again." She chuckled. "Why did you think I sounded so excited to find rancid breast milk?"

Daryl shrugged. "Dunno. Women folk's odd. All sorts of weird shit excites ya."

"Yeah?" She picked up the glass she'd just poured. "What kind of weird shit do you think _excites_ me?" She wiggled an eyebrow as she extended him the glass.

"Stop," he muttered as he wrapped his hand around the glass, his fingers briefly touching hers before he slid it from her grasp. His eyes fell straight into the wine, and his cheeks colored slightly. The fire crackled and then popped.

"It's very romantic, isn't it?" Carol teased as she poured herself a glass. "Wine by firelight after a sit-down, two-course dinner?"

He grunted and sipped. He started with something of a gulp, but then slowed, and rolled the liquid on his tongue for a moment before swallowing. "This ain't half bad," he said. "For wine."

Carol settled back against the cushion, crossed her legs, and directed her attention to him. "What was your drink of choice before all this?"

"Cheap whiskey."

"Irish or Scotch?"

"Tennessee."

She nodded. "My father used to drink Southern Comfort."

"My mama drank that crap. Cain't stand it. All spicy and sweet and shit."

"He used to drink it every evening, in his arm chair, by the fire."

Daryl looked at her, his blue eyes deepening with concern and sweeping her face. "Bad memory?"

She shook her head. "No. No. Good memories."

"Yer Daddy didn't…he weren't like Ed?"

"No," she told him. "He was a good man, but he died when I was just sixteen."

"How'd you and yer mama…what'd ya do?"

Carol took a small sip of her wine. "I never knew my mother. So it was just me after Daddy died."

"At sixteen?"

She nodded. "The house was underwater. There were medical bills. I had no inheritance to speak of. They put me in foster care, in this house with six other kids. One of the girls was really cruel to me, and the mother just wanted us to be workhorses. I hated it. So I ran away."

"Damn. Didn't picture ya for a runaway. Whatchya do?"

"I lived with this boy who was three years older than me, that I knew from high school, who had his own apartment. It was a bad idea. I never finished high school because I didn't want to be caught and sent back to the foster home. I just cooked and cleaned for him, but he didn't treat me nicely. Still, he was better than that foster home."

"Beat ya? Like Ed?"

"No. He didn't beat me. But he criticized me a lot. He cheated on me. We were together three years. When I was nineteen, I started trying to make something of myself. I got my GED and got a job as a receptionist. Left him. I didn't make much money, but I lived in an old woman's spare bedroom in exchange for cooking and cleaning for her and paying half the utilities. I spun my wheels for the next four years, never getting a raise, never going anywhere. Then I met Ed. And he promised me an escape from my lonely, miserable little life." She sighed. "So I took it. I didn't realize what I was giving up. I thought I was trapped in that old woman's house. I didn't know what trapped was."

She drained her glass of wine and put it down on the coffee table. He leaned forward and poured her another one. "Ain't trapped now," he said.

She looked around at the boarded-up windows, the chairs down the hallway, piled against the front door, and then caught his eye. He snorted. She giggled. "Trapped with better company, anyway," she said.

"Ain't never been accused of bein' good company before."

She picked up her wine glass. "Well, keep pouring and you might be."

"So I should nurse mine? Leave ya most the bottle?"

"There's two more bottles," she told him. "Though we should probably bring one bottle home to the prison to share." _Home_. The word had just fallen from her lips, naturally, but it sounded strange now. It seemed to echo in the quite living room, drift in and out of the flickering flames in the fireplace, like an elusive promise.

"Mmhm."

Thunder boomed and rattled the house. The wine sloshed up the sides and almost spilled out of Carol's glass when she jumped at the sound. Rain battered the house, like tiny pebbles pelting the siding, and the wind howled. "I hate storms. It stormed the night my father died. I had to wait alone for the ambulance, with just his body beside me, and the rain all around." Another crack of thunder made her shiver.

Daryl stood up from the loveseat. He walked around the coffee table, temporarily blocking the light from the fireplace, and then sat beside her on the couch. It was a simple move. He didn't even touch her. But she was instantly comforted.

Carol smiled at him. He poured himself some more wine, sat back against the cushion, and let his legs fall open, relaxed. His knee touched hers. She liked the feel of it, solid and warm. He sipped in silence for a while, and then said, "Glockous?"

"What?"

"Hell's that word you used? 'Bout the grapes."

"Glaucous. It can also mean of a dull, grayish green or blue color. Like my eyes."

"Yer eyes ain't dull." His eyes flitted to hers, for just a moment, and then back to his wine.

A light smile appeared on her face. She ran a fingertip around the edge of her wine glass until it whistled, higher than the wind outside.

"How ya do that?" he asked, and tried it on his glass, but produced no sound. So instead he just drank it down.

She drank hers down and set the empty glass on the table. "It's been a long time since I've had wine. I think I'm already buzzed."

"Not since the CDC," he said, and then bit his bottom lip and looked at her cautiously. The unspoken thought between them was that Sophia had still been alive back then.

The thought of her lost little girl clawed at Carol's heart. Her cheek twitched, and she swallowed a sudden, unexpected sob. She blinked back the tears that threatened to fill, and looked away from Daryl, toward the pile of furniture by the front door.

Thunder roared, and the rain fell harder.

Daryl sighed, and his breath warmed her cheek. "Carol," he said softly. "Hell. Wish…Cain't…Hell." His glass clicked down on the coffee table, and then his hand was over hers. He'd never done that before. Reached for her hand like that. She turned and buried her face against his shoulder, and her tears wet his black leather jacket.

She pulled away a minute later. "Sorry," she apologized. "I got your jacket all wet."

"S'aight." He shed it, and he had on a button-down plaid shirt beneath it. She lay her head on the worn, comfortable fabric clothing his shoulder and looked at the fire.

Very slowly and hesitantly, he slid his arm around her and let his hand rest on her other shoulder. He felt a little stiff, but eventually he didn't. His muscles relaxed. The minutes crept by. She melted further against his side and closed her eyes.

Sleep came.

Carol awoke to find herself stretched out on the couch, an afghan tossed over her, and Daryl crumpled up like a curled baby on the shorter love seat.

The rain had stopped. The storm had passed and left in its wake a brand new morning.

 **THE END**


End file.
